Joe Manganiello says a shaman told him Sofia Vergara's ex 'put a voodoo curse' on him
Joe Manganiello released his new memoir, "Bloodlines," which is already receiving a lot of buzz online.
From revealing details about his divorce from Sofía Vergara, the seven-year-long mystery illness that nearly took his life and Tom Cruise's alleged involvement in the star being nixed in the "Reacher" series, below are the biggest bombshells from "Bloodlines: A Memoir."
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Manganiello and Vergara married in 2015 and announced their separation in 2023. Their divorce was finalized in 2024.
In his memoir, Manganiello detailed that he proposed to her in Spanish in Kauai, Hawaii, and the next year they were married. They planned on starting a family.
"She told me that when we first met, she wasn’t thinking about having more children, but she had sworn that if she ever remarried and her husband wanted kids, she’d do it," Manganiello wrote. "It was clear right away how we felt about each other, so at the urging of her doctor, before we were even engaged, we began trying via IVF."
Manganiello said that after two years of trying to have a child, they were unsuccessful. The former couple even entertained the idea of having a surrogate, but $200,000 later, they decided it was not the right time due to Manganiello's "mystery illness."
A year after the couple tied the knot, Manganiello was admitted into the hospital for two months straight.
"To visit me, Sofía had to lie down out of sight in the back of her assistant’s car, until they were sure they had lost the paparazzi, before heading to the hospital where she would disguise herself in a wig and hat and sneak in through the loading dock," Manganiello wrote.
It was Vergara who made the lifesaving decision to have the doctor remove Manganiello's large intestine so he would survive.
"While I was under, they called Sofía, who, as my next of kin, had to choose what she thought I would want the doctors to do. She made the brutal but lifesaving decision to allow my entire large intestine to be removed and a hole to be cut into my abdomen to divert my small intestine."
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"When I woke up after the ten-hour procedure, she was there at the foot of my bed to inform me that the surgery had saved my life but had left me with an ostomy bag for an indefinite amount of time, possibly forever," he wrote.
Manganiello credits his illness for contributing to his marriage with Vergara falling apart.
"I started to live separately on the opposite side of the house during the day, and with the loss of my enthusiasm for life and the death of the dream of her and me becoming parents together, the fire between us began to go out," he said, referring to the period after he was released from the hospital.
Manganiello was admitted into the hospital for two months straight after a year of symptoms from his "mystery illness." He lost 60 pounds in two weeks after having his large intestine removed to save his life.
In his memoir, he wrote that a Cuba-based shaman told him he was "sick" and "something is wrong with his intestines." At the time, Manganiello said members of his close family did not even know the extent of his illness and gave Vergara a "side-eye" that was "equal parts fear, anger, and disbelief."
The shaman then said that an ex from Vergara's past who still had romantic feelings for her put a curse on Manganiello.
"'Someone from your past is still in love with you. He put a voodoo curse on your husband. He did it in New Orleans,'" Manganiello recalled the shaman telling him.
He continued, "'Your husband needs to be cleansed and protected. I can do this. I can help him. But I need to see him for two days, and I cannot come to the United States. Can he meet me somewhere else? I could meet him in Ecuador.'"
Manganiello was stunned by the shaman's comments.
"I looked at Sofía, trying to comprehend how the f–k this guy could possibly know any of this," he wrote. "None of this had been mentioned in the press. No one knew."
Manganiello began racking his brain, trying to figure out what ex it could be. He eventually believed it could have been "the guy she was with right before me."
Vergara and Nick Loeb called off their engagement in 2014. That same year, Vergara began dating Manganiello. He wrote in his memoir that Loeb suffered a "horrendous car wreck" while he was dating Vergara and began to question if his ex-wife was the cursed one.
"The thought crossed my mind maybe it was Sofía who was cursed, cursed by some man in her past who couldn’t have her, so he put some sort of hex on her so that for the rest of her life, she’d transmit it to any man who got together with her," Manganiello wrote.
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He continued, "I was fully aware of how crazy it was for me to seriously entertain thoughts this bizarre, but then again, how did the shaman know all of that about me?"
Loeb shared a statement with Page Six after learning of Manganiello's accusations. "I pray they find Jesus — not another shaman," he told the outlet.
Manganiello recounted the moment he told Vergara that he was "leaving the marriage."
"After she left for a vacation in Italy with her friend, I found a place to live, got the keys, and ordered a bed and a TV to be delivered that weekend. I then had everything I owned packed up and moved out," he wrote.
Manganiello clarified that it was only after he moved out of their home in Beverly Hills to a new place in Venice Beach that he filed for divorce.
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He also wrote about a $500,000 loan he took from Vergara to prevent the bond company from taking over the 2019 movie, "Bottom of the 9th," after "a major budgetary error was discovered headed into the postproduction phase."
"Because I was also the producer and star, I felt as though saving the film was my responsibility, and when I began the process of lining up a bank loan, Sofía offered to lend me the money with 0 percent interest," Manganiello wrote. "I’d never in my life taken a dime from anyone I’d ever dated, let alone her, but I swallowed what little of my pride I had left and accepted."
At the time of the divorce, he still owed Vergara $400,000.
Manganiello addressed the comments Vergara made about their divorce in the media, and called them "annoying" in his memoir. "But at the end of the day, they didn’t really matter as long as they didn’t ultimately hurt my career," he emphasized.
Manganiello made some harsh claims about Vergara's departing words to him.
"What bothered me more were the things said in a surgical attempt to hurt me as I walked out the door. She told me that I was wrong, that I wasn’t healthy after all, and that I was going to get sick again. She also let me know that in her opinion, no one was going to love me when they found out the full extent of what I had," he wrote.
"That was the last time I ever spoke to her," he clarified.
Manganiello accused Vergara's ex, Tom Cruise, of getting in the way of his involvement in the Prime series, "Reacher."
In his memoir, Manganiello wrote that Amazon executives were set on him for the role of Lee Child, but the part suddenly went to someone else. He suspects Cruise was involved in that decision.
Cruise, "an executive producer [on the show], could have potentially come in over the top and vetoed my being cast on account of Sofía," Manganiello wrote.
Vergara and Cruise allegedly dated in 2005, a decade before Manganiello and the "Modern Family" star tied the knot. On IMDb Pro, Cruise is not listed as an executive producer on the "Reacher" series.